Fifteen-year-old Milrose Munce, the quirky lead character in Douglas Anthony Cooper’s magnificent book, Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help, is “on fine terms with the dead.” Not only does he see Poisoned Percy, Deeply Damaged Dave, Cryogenic Kelvin and their pals, he also converses with them, egging them on in their invisible tomfoolery with the teachers, except for Ms. Corduroy on whom he has a deep and abiding crush. But his cavorting with the dead comes with a cost when his guidance counselor, Archibald Loosten, consigns him to the school’s Den of Professional help for his sins of “having conversations. With empty space. With people who are clearly not there.” But Milrose knows his ectoplasmic friends are there, and he knows all about them. He knows, for example, that Deeply Damaged Dave died in an accidental explosion. So did Stuck Stu, although his was a blow-up of a different kind. Lovebirds Toasted Theresa and Floating Phil died “as lovebirds do, within minutes of each other,” the one from “a fire in the chemical storeroom,” the other from “swallowing much of the pool.” A vat of hydrochloric acid was Bored Beulah’s final resting place, and “a refreshingly cool drink” of liquid nitrogen became Cryogenic Kelvin’s undoing.
Nevertheless, once Milrose’s parents have been tricked into signing a consent form confirming his need for Professional Help, Milrose heads off to the school’s basement, site of the Den. There he teams up with a girl, a “Nameless You” soon known as Arabella, who admits that she strokes a pet flower. “I too have been designated. As one in need. Of Professional Help,” she tells him. It appears that they both of them have had public dealings with the poetic Poisoned Percy, alias Parsifal, and his epic 72-page poem about “Digestion. And its enemy indigestion”. Eventually the poem stretches to 300 pages and becomes a weapon in the final battle in Cooper’s book. But first, the two ghost whisperers must meet up with Massimo Natica, their counselling custodian during the six weeks or so that they live in the Den submitting themselves to his program of Professional Help. It is a strange program indeed, requiring them to be locked into a room with an in-swing door in the ceiling, a tower of bunk beds, and displays of an antique cattle prod, an old-fashioned pitch fork and a “line of framed strait-jackets . . . arranged in historical order, to illustrate the evolution of the garment over time.” These are Massimo’s props, to which a great mace with a chain and spiked iron ball is added later on to assist him, along with various tests of trust to convince the flippant duo that ghosts don’t rule, much less exist. But despite several misgivings and a couple of setbacks, Milrose and Arabella continue to resist Massimo’s “professional help”, even mocking it and questioning him about his professional training.
Cooper’s novel is a fun-filled record of imagination run wild. Ghosts like Hurled Harry, Third Degree Thor, Desiccated Douglas, and the athletic Sledge are a riot, and their antics, as they help Milrose and Arabella escape the den, have to be read to be believed. Comic scenes like Arabella lying on the linoleum floor and whispering seductively to the ghosts below are abundant, while rapid-fire repartee, puns, and wordplay grace almost every page. There’s “silence remarkable in its silenceness,” a reference to Milrose as “the only boy I know who is capable of meaning the meaningless,” and an allusion to a “subject too terrifying even for most terrifying ghosts.” There is Cryogenic Kelvin bragging about dating the dead contortionist until “she got a little bent out of shape.” As well, there is ghost chemistry, which most people call magic, and the temporary explosions that “deplode” after a time and return everything back to the way things were. And then there are the revelations about the Vile Exorcist and the evildoers he controls, just before the final battle of spells and counter spells that leaves the exorcist exorcised, the evildoers undone, and the school ghosts acknowledged-although the new Principal, Ms. Corduroy, and “the staff and parents agreed it was best to keep this information out of the brochures.” And what of Milrose Munce and Arabella? Well, Milrose was “made happy by Arabella’s happiness” while ”Arabella, who never smiled, smiled.” And anyone who reads about their spirited adventures with ghosts is guaranteed to end up laughing out loud.
M. Wayne Cunningham (Books in Canada)
--Ce texte provient de la
Hardcover
édition.
“Funny in a twisted way. . . . Engaging.” -
The Magazine
“Magnificent. . . . Rapid-fire repartee, puns, and wordplay grace almost every page. . . . Anyone who reads [
Milrose Munce] is guaranteed to laugh out loud.” -
Books in Canada
“Absolutely flawless. A cunningly subversive young-adult novel from one of the only living writers of English who knows how to craft a sentence.” - Joseph Suglia, author of
Watch Out
